Glitch
by pulseofblood
Summary: "Maybe there was a glitch in my brain." Behind Bella's frontal lobe sits a cancerous tumor. Chemo slowly shrinks her tumor and her lifespan. Edward is positive Bella will live, but Bella is not sure if she will survive it as a human. Canon Pairings/Post-Twilight AU


_Maybe there was a glitch in my brain._

Tumor. Terminal.

Right behind what makes me me, there's a growing rock that presses against who I am, creating discomforting headaches and a strange ability to stop my vampire boyfriend from reading my mind.

I've been scanned countless of times, gone under the knife, but it won't go away. It comes back. It always comes back, like the visions Alice has of me being normal again. Humanly normal, not breathtakingly vampiric.

My hair is gone and I can't hide my face from him, my blush, when he tells me I'm still beautiful when I am not. He told me once that he's a professional liar. I only believe that fact and nothing more.

After my third relapse, chemo has little effect on the tumor, but there's noticeable shrinkage. Carlisle says I could survive. Alice says I will. Edward says I'll still be human when I do.

I'm afraid of dying, and, mostly, the needles that pinch into my skin and put me under one last time. But this is a relief. I am ready. As my sight grows murky, the last things I see are Edward's dark eyes. He's thirsty and I'm more concerned for him than myself.

When I wake up, everything is clear. Clearer than before the morphine sunk in. I remember the pain that burned me in surgery. I touch my head; my hair is shorter than Alice's, shaved completely smooth. I will resort to wigs for the rest of eternity.

Edward says I'm beautiful.

This time I can't blush.

* * *

_I am not suited for this life_, I think as I break the buck's neck.

"I'm not suited for this life," I say as I finally look into the mirror weeks later, noticing my fading red eyes. Golden hues shine behind them, sparkle like my skin.

Having no hair has given me wide set eyes and too big ears to mirror my too big top lip. Compared to my family, I am not a match to their beauty. But I never thought I would look healthy again so I take the thought with pride, glad to be abnormal in the coven of magnificent vampires, but glad to be normal when I think of my lost humanity. Though I'm more human than the lot of them, I fit in just fine.

A fleeting thought in the back of my tumorless brain says that I'll never be the person that I was. I growl in return. Like Rosalie, I can't accept my fate. Like Edward, I believe I lost my soul as I lost my tumor. As I lost my mortality. Edward suffers from this; he wallows alone in the forest, running aimlessly, trying to accept my fate. It isn't until he comes back that I realize that he'll only be happy when I become happy. He has a long wait.

Jasper stands behind me, savoring my mixed emotions. He is like lungs, taking in my raw feelings, filtering them, breathing them out as buoyant happiness. I absorb them as a tree absorbs carbon dioxide and perk back to life. I blossom, I bloom. To my side is Edward, dark-eyed and filthy. His hand rests on my shoulder. This is the most contact I've received from him since the hospital, since my change. I meet his eyes and Jasper's power has gone to waste.

"What do you think?" He sounds as if he needs a drink of water, a bag of A positive.

I can't answer. My tongue is stiff, my hands are shaky, and my still heart somehow feels as if it will fly out of my chest.

Again: "What do you think?"

Thrice now. "What do you think?"

But I can't think.

I am zoned out, back in Phoenix, back inconspicuously in the sunlight, feeling my mother's hand hold mine and hearing car horns and seeing my reflection in the glass of skyscrapers as I pass by them at a human rate. I want to reminisce forever. To not think about eternity and hunting and hiding myself from mortals, living a life of lies while not actually living. I want to breathe in again and not see dust moats travel into my mouth in a vortex. I want to feel the smoothness of wood, not each pulp, grain, that has been sanded down for humans to never notice. I want to be cured, to gain a soul, to obtain the tumor again and die from it.

I never made this choice.

* * *

A/N: I still have one more idea to add onto this story. When it's written, I'll add it as the epilogue. - Mel


End file.
